Kopuwai Archaeology

The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt

Published by

Matthew Sole

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Delivering Resilience

Central Otago Value: Making A Sustainable Difference

The `mother and father to us all’ is how Matt describes our environment. It sustains and preserves us and we’re not looking after it well. He sees the need for robust conversations that go beyond sustainability to deliver resilience in what we do and how we do it.

“As an archaeologist I get to look at a lot of early photographs. I look at photographs of where I live and at the footprint and the changes we’ve made…and I just have grave concerns over the size and scale of that footprint and what we’re passing on.”

“I’m very, very uncomfortable about how we are borrowing forward at an incredible rate and depriving our future generations. It begs the question as to what sort of ancestors do we want to be remembered for?”

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Published in 1958, “The Human Condition” is Hannah Arendt’s take on how “human activities” should be and have been understood throughout Western history.

Arendt is interested in the vita activa (active life) as contrasted with the vita contemplativa (contemplative life) and concerned that the debate over the relative status of the two has blinded us to important insights about the vita activa and the way in which it has changed since ancient times.

She distinguishes three sorts of activity (labor, work, and action) and discusses how they have been affected by changes in Western history.

Men in plural can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.

Hannah Arendt
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